Looking for proven workflows that actually work in practice
I want to know how people are really using Emacs with JIRA in their daily work. I’ve tried different packages but most discussions focus on which tool to use rather than how to use them effectively.
What I’m really interested in are specific use cases like:
- Getting all tickets from a sprint and creating org-mode tables with their current status
- Fetching a specific ticket with all its comments and being able to add new ones
- Managing epic breakdowns and tracking progress
I’d love to hear about workflows that people actually use every day, not just theoretical possibilities. What has worked well for you? What hasn’t been worth the effort?
Trying to avoid spending weeks testing everything myself when others have probably already figured out the best approaches.
After trying various approaches over the past year, I settled on using org-jira with a hybrid approach that balances automation with manual control. My daily routine involves pulling sprint data once in the morning and working from that snapshot throughout the day. I create a weekly org file that imports all my assigned tickets along with their current status and priority. The game changer was setting up custom properties in org-mode to track things like story points and sprint goals alongside the JIRA data. For comment management, I avoid trying to sync everything bidirectionally. Instead, I draft comments and updates in org-mode first, then push them to JIRA when ready. This lets me work offline and think through responses properly before posting. The workflow that saved me the most time was creating template functions for common ticket types. When I get a new bug report, one command creates the org structure, pulls the ticket data, and sets up my standard investigation checklist. Similar templates exist for feature work and code reviews. One thing I learned the hard way is that trying to replace JIRA entirely through Emacs creates more friction with teammates who expect to see activity in the web interface. The sweet spot is using Emacs for personal organization while maintaining visibility in JIRA itself.
honestly the best setup ive found is just using restclient.el with some custom snippets for jira’s api. no fancy packages needed.
i keep a .http file with templated requests for common stuff like getting ticket details or posting comments. takes 5 mins to setup and works way more reliably than the jira packages that break every few months.
for sprint tracking i just curl the data into a temp buffer and parse what i need with some basic elisp.
I’ve been using jiralib2 with org-mode for about two years now and found that keeping it simple works best. My main workflow revolves around syncing specific tickets rather than trying to manage entire sprints through Emacs.
What actually works for me is having a dedicated org file where I pull individual tickets when I need to work on them. I use a custom function that fetches the ticket details, creates an org heading with the summary, and pulls in the description and latest comments. This gives me everything in one place without the overhead of constantly syncing large datasets.
For epic tracking, I found that manually creating org hierarchies works better than trying to automate everything. I’ll create a parent heading for the epic and sub-headings for each story, then use org-mode’s progress tracking features rather than trying to keep everything perfectly synced with JIRA.
The key insight I learned is that bidirectional sync is more trouble than it’s worth for most use cases. Instead, I focus on pulling data when needed and pushing updates manually. This approach has been much more reliable and less frustrating than the automated workflows I initially tried to set up.